


This is How Everything Ends

by elithewho



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Tragedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-10
Updated: 2011-05-10
Packaged: 2017-10-19 05:34:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/197482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elithewho/pseuds/elithewho
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The roses were dying.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is How Everything Ends

The roses were dying. Lyanna sat at the window and watched as the blue roses crisped and shed their leaves in the dry Dornish heat. They could never thrive this far south, yet Rhaegar had planted them outside her window all the same. They had been blooming when she saw him last.

Lyanna was getting weak. She hadn’t left her tower room in weeks and weeks and her belly was getting bigger while her arms and legs got thinner. Sometimes there was blood in thick discharge from her racking coughs.

“This is how it ends,” she said sadly to the dead roses, wishing they would bloom for her one last time.

Rhaegar had laid a crown on fresh winter roses on her lap and his purple eyes had found hers as he smiled sadly. The day before, he had found her in a copse of trees by a stream, washing the sweat from her hair after the tourney, her stolen armor beside her in the grass.

“So the brave mystery knight is a pretty wolf maiden, how strange.” He had frightened her at first, but he touched her shoulder gently and she flushed unconsciously. _He had called her pretty._

When he had placed the crown of roses on her lap she knew it meant more than what it was. Everyone had stared, shocked and whispering and Lyanna felt afraid again but not in the same way. _This is a dangerous game you’re playing,_ she told his purple eyes.

A dry, hot breeze stirred the dead blue petals scattered over the stones of her tower room. Lyanna felt like the hot plains in summer; dried, cracked and numb. _This is how everything ends._

When she left Winterfell for the last time, she knew it was a horrible mistake. Neither Robert nor her family would simply let her go and she hated them a bit for that. _If I stay, I will die._ If she was a good daughter, she would marry Robert and have many black haired children all with their father’s eyes to match the bastards he would have on other women. If she stayed, everything inside of her would wither and turn to ash. But if she left, she might catch some of that wild joy she felt when she was given a crown of blue roses and every high born lord and lady looked at her in astonishment. She might touch some of that agonizing beauty she had heard in Rhaegar’s voice as he sang the saddest song she’d ever known.

“A girl’s foolish dream,” she told the empty sky, grey and featureless. “Everything ends.”

Ser Arthur Dayne had not told her Rhaegar was dead, but she knew. She knew just has surely as she knew he father and brother were dead and it was all her fault. Lyanna might weep if she was not so hollow and cold. _I am a stone and a stone cannot cry._

Rhaegar had taken her to Summerhall and they had lain in the open air, the sky filled with milky stars and warm summer winds. When he took her maidenhead, Lyanna had screamed to the watching night and Rhaegar had stopped in alarm, touching her face and apologizing but Lyanna had welcomed the pain. It was bright and hot and real and like nothing she could have imagined. She urged him on and he had moved inside her again, stroking her breasts and juncture of her thighs bringing with it a mad, fierce elation that filled her up like honey wine, hot and delirious. Afterwards he had brought her to her pleasure with his mouth and in that moment of white hot rapture she thought it was all worth it.

This is how it ends, she thought through the pain. Nothing in the world could hurt as much as this, the sounds of clashing swords and dying men loud in her ears and dead blue petals sticking to her skin. Hours and hours, it seemed to last. The child was a boy and his hair was black as hers and she thought at first his eyes were purple blue. _No, dark grey, like mine._

“Was it all worth it? For you, maybe,” she whispered to the boy as he wailed, the screams of his first moment of life mingling with Ser Arthur Dayne’s last. She was shivering, cold as winter in the heat of summer and her child screamed and screamed.

When Ned finally entered her chamber and fell to his knees beside her bed, bloodstained and gaunt, she knew what he could do for her to set it all right.

**Author's Note:**

> for the ASOIAF Kinkmeme: http://robellion.livejournal.com/2809.html


End file.
